eBay's UK site was the Christmas e-tail winner in terms of visitor numbers, according to Web researcher Hitwise.
Throughout December, the e-tailer attracted more hits than any of its rivals in the shopping and classified sales category, which includes Amazon, Argos and Tesco.com.
Over the month, eBay notched up a 26 per cent visitor market share.
Amazon, its closest rival, recorded a market share of 8.2 per cent.
Traffic to online retail sites reached unprecedented heights at Christmas. In the week ending December 6, e-tailers accounted for a record 10.6 per cent of Internet traffic.
After that, retail traffic fell to 10.4 per cent in the week ending December 13 and 9.45 per cent in the week ended December 20.
2003 was well up on 2002, when retail sites attracted 7.83 per cent of Web traffic in the peak pre-Christmas week.
Argos.co.uk retained its position as the number three UK shopping site in 2003, with a 2.31 share - marginally up on the previous year.
A spokesman said the figures reflected consumers' increasing trust in online shopping.
- Figleaves.com, the lingerie e-tailer, posted bumper Christmas sales, up 205 per cent on the previous year. December sales topped£2.5 million and US sales contributed 15 per cent of that total.
Chairman Daniel Nabarro said the figures had come in ahead of forecasts.
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